Kaya Reader

I've been making some decisions about my own business lately, particularly around where I spend my time and energy.

I work full-time alongside running my business, and I'm having to be more intentional about what I can realistically sustain and where my efforts will have the greatest impact.

It's not always easy to make those decisions when you care deeply about the work you're doing. But I'm learning that being committed to a bigger vision doesn't mean I can do everything at once. I still have to make choices, weigh up the options and work within my actual capacity.

And it got me thinking about something that comes up regularly in Inclusive Business Leadership.

What happens when we recognise that our businesses may be creating barriers for marginalised people, but we're not entirely sure how to address them?

When good intentions meet uncertainty

Perhaps you've realised that your pricing makes your services difficult to access for some people.

Maybe your booking process creates barriers for people with disability, or your policies don't account for the different circumstances of the people you want to serve.

You want to make a change. You want your business to reflect your commitment to inclusion.

But you're also aware that changing something doesn't automatically mean you've solved the problem.

You might introduce a new payment option and discover that other barriers still prevent people from accessing your services. You might redesign a process with accessibility in mind and realise there's something important you hadn't considered.

So you hesitate.

You research more. You look for advice. You try to work out the best possible solution before making a move.

Sometimes that's exactly what responsible decision-making requires.

But sometimes, we're searching for a level of certainty that simply isn't available.

Whose experience informs your decisions?

When we're making decisions about inclusion, it's easy to focus on whether we feel confident about the solution.

But a more useful question is whether we've properly understood the barrier we're trying to address.

• Have we considered how marginalised people might experience the existing process?
• Have we examined the assumptions we've built into our offers, policies and ways of working?
• Have we sought relevant knowledge and perspectives beyond our own?
• And have we considered the consequences of leaving things as they are?

These questions matter because our own experience of a business isn't necessarily representative of someone else's.

A process that feels straightforward to us might create significant barriers for a person with disability. A payment structure that seems reasonable from our perspective might make accessing a service unrealistic for someone experiencing financial disadvantage.

We can't assume that what works for us works equally well for everyone.

Nor can we expect one person from a marginalised community to speak for everyone who shares that experience.

Inclusive business design requires us to look beyond our own perspective and take seriously the experiences of people who may encounter barriers we don't experience ourselves.

That doesn't mean we'll always know exactly what to change. It means we can make more informed decisions about what needs our attention.

The cost of waiting for the perfect answer

There's another part of this conversation worth considering.

When we're worried about getting an inclusion decision wrong, we might assume that waiting is the safest option.

But what happens while we wait?

If our booking process creates barriers, people may continue to encounter them.

If our pricing excludes people who might otherwise benefit from our services, that exclusion continues.

If our policies don't account for different needs and circumstances, the people affected may continue to carry the burden of working around them.

Doing nothing doesn't necessarily avoid harm. Sometimes it allows an existing barrier to remain in place.

Of course, that doesn't mean rushing into changes without thinking them through. An ill-considered decision can create new problems, too.

It means considering both sides of the decision: the potential consequences of making a change and the consequences of maintaining the current arrangement.

We can investigate the issue, seek appropriate expertise, make a considered change and pay attention to what happens afterwards.

We can learn from the experience and make further adjustments where needed.

We don't need to guarantee a perfect outcome before we take responsibility for improving inclusion.

What this asks of us as business leaders

This is one of the reasons I see Inclusive Business Leadership as a leadership practice, rather than simply a collection of inclusive tips and strategies.

Our values help us understand what matters. But they don't automatically tell us how to respond when different needs, circumstances and constraints intersect.

We still need to exercise judgement.

We need to recognise the assumptions influencing our decisions, consider whose experiences may be missing, weigh up the options and decide how to proceed.

And we need to remain attentive to the experience our decisions create once they're implemented.

Because inclusion isn't established simply because we intended to be inclusive or introduced a change that looked good on paper.

It's experienced through the way our businesses actually work.

When we discover that our decisions haven't produced the experience we intended, we have an opportunity to learn, respond and improve.

That's part of taking responsibility for the impact of our leadership.

A question to take into your week

Think about one aspect of your business that might be creating a barrier for marginalised people.

It could be your pricing, your service delivery, your policies, your marketing or something else in the way people access and experience your work.

Ask yourself three questions.

1. What barrier am I actually trying to address?
2. Whose experiences have informed my thinking, and whose perspectives might be missing?
3. What is one considered next step I could take to better understand the situation or begin improving it?

You don't need to solve everything at once. Start by identifying what needs your attention and what would help you make a more informed decision.

This is how we build our capacity to lead more inclusively, through the everyday decisions that shape people's experiences of our businesses.

And it's the kind of thinking we'll continue exploring together inside the Inclusion Creators Collective.

Because a more inclusive world isn't built through good intentions alone. It's built when we're willing to examine how things work, recognise where people are being excluded and make considered changes to the systems and experiences we've created.

Until next time, much love.